Animal husbandry facilities, such as dairy barns, feed lots or hog barns, include alleys or gutters for manure collection. Vehicles such as tractors or skid-steer loaders are equipped with scraper blades or front-end bucket systems to transfer manure accumulated in the alley or gutter to one end of the barn for removal and disposal. However, with the very large facilities that are becoming quite common in modern dairy farming, sometimes with an overall length in excess of 1000 feet, the quantity of accumulated material is too great to transfer to one end of the facility.
Presently, vacuum type systems are available for the collection of materials in these types of facilities, for example the Honey-Vac™. However, these types of systems are more suitable for more liquid and semi-liquid type materials and may not perform at a desired operational level having regard to more solid material, which may include liquid or semi-liquid material mixed with bedding materials and/or frozen or semi-frozen material, for example.
Therefore there is a need for improvements in the collection and removal of material from animal husbandry facilities, in particular for material which has a solid, semi-solid consistency.
This background information is provided to reveal information believed by the applicant to be of possible relevance to the present invention. No admission is necessarily intended, nor should be construed, that any of the preceding information constitutes prior art against the present invention.